Finally got around to watching this. If Google’s Wave takes off (and it will), it will change everything. This is better than email, better than IM, better than a personal wiki. Within months of this going live, we will have a million new ways to communicate. That they’ve made it open source makes it more likely than any other tool to change how we communicate via the web.
Tag: google
Someone hacked my Gmail!
Not really.
Google released a small update yesterday that adds information about recent activity on your Gmail account to the bottom of the Gmail interface.
The new option in the Gmail interfaceIt also includes a link to further information, including details of IP addresses and methods that have recently been used to access your account. If anyone has accessed your mail in any way, it will be reported here.
Argh! What is that?!I checked mine the minute it showed up in my inbox, and was shocked to see a bunch of IP addresses listed, when I hadn’t been anywhere near my computer in the last five hours.
Starting the Google Treasure Hunt: How to do the first three questions
Google has been running a “treasurehunt” with unspecified prizes up for grabs for the fastest times to complete the tasks. What it amounts to is four questions spaced over a month, that you can log onto in your own time and attempt to nut out. The questions are randomly generated, but are of a different type each week. The first week was a number/maths problem, the second was a computer/file problem, the third a logic (and slightly computer network) problem. I haven’t seen the final fourth question yet.
I thought I’d jot down how I answered the questions — not my particular answers — as they will be different for other people, but the methods for answering the questions which are the same for each of the four question types.
Please note that I cannot finish the treasure hunt. I got stuck at question four. I wrote up how I did questions one to three before I’d done four and it just seemed like a waste not to post them.
Potential Google Game
google_logo, originally uploaded by keso.OK, I haven’t Googled it so this game might already exist.
Two or more players — one player does a bit of research (if they need to) and declares some piece of information that the other players must find. Ideally it should be something that will only be found on one page on the net — not common info like you might find on Wikipedia, but rather some small factoid on some obscure website in the outer reaches of the internet.
Then the other players have to craft the perfect search phrase that will produce that page in the top result of a Google search — without using any of the actual words you’re searching for, or any prior knowledge of the page to your advantage. The player’s score decreases with every failed attempt to make it into the top spot.
I can’t think of anyone geeky enough to actually play this with me, so it’s purely hypothetical. And it’d probably need honing and crafting to make it playable. If you’re geeky enough you might also like Googlewhacking or you could check out this online archive of Google games.
My Love/Hate relationship with Google
Actually, it’s more of a love/frustration relationship. It’s so one-sided.
I’m a big fan of Google. About 3 years ago I realised that working between home and two schools, I’d have a lot of information that I’d need to share around easily. Web 2.0 had just hit its stride and instead of stowing everything I created, wrote or needed on a USB stick, I thought I’d see how much I could get online.
Google at the time was expanding rapidly, and had just added a calendar to its already successful online mail app. A little while later it acquired Writely — which luck would have it I already had an account at. All in all, Google was looking set to be able to take my data online and keep it all together in one big web-app.
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World’s Largest Reel-to-Reel
While zooming around my old home town of Gladstone, QLD through Google Map’s much improved interface, I came across this from above.
The World’s largest reel-to-reel.
It’s gotta be in the Guinness World record books somewhere. I have my crack team of researchers standing by to find it.
Yet another use for Gmail — file recovery
I recently discovered another use for Gmail’s ‘convert to html’ feature.
For those of you who weren’t aware, Word and PDF files that you receive in Gmail can be opened in-browser as html files. What this means for you and me is a simple way to open some of these common file-types without needing to download the file and fire up the correct program — simply click ‘Open as HTML’ and you’ve got your file, ready to read in seconds using Google’s conversion.
Gmail Easter Egg
Ok, originally I thought this was just a goofy co-incidence.
Gmail’s spam mailbox has spam recipes up the top when you have web clips enabled! I thought it might be just their advertising seeping into inappropriate areas, but now I think they’re actually having a little joke about spam!
Outrage
It seems that I’m the only one shocked that Google keeps putting up pages telling users (customers) that they have a virus. For those who don’t know, some users (when making searches) are sent to a page that declares:
We’re sorry… but we can’t process your request right now. A computer virus or spyware application is sending us automated requests, and it appears that your computer or network has been infected.
